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Wow…where has the week gone! I’ve had my head ‘in the books’ pretty much all week, with 2 deadlines approaching quickly, if I’m honest it’s been a little stressful.

In the past, hours of studying has made me feel quite anxious, mostly about gaining weight because my activity levels tend to be much lower. Sometimes, despite having come so far those thoughts still niggle away in the back of my mind, but this year I’m determined not to listen and remember what is important in the long run….happiness, health and passing my exams!!

This week has included some really great workouts;

Monday – 7am Bodypump class (yes 7AM!!)

Tuesday – Bodycombat class

Wednesday – Squash…with James and his brothers

Thursday – Rest day

Friday – 7am Spin class

plus 30-45minutes walking the dog each day.

I definitely feel like I’ve got a nice balance at the moment, James and I are still looking after Barney, our favourite little man…

…and I just can’t resist his face when he wants to go for a walk!!

Having him here is REALLY making us want one of our own. We’ve (I’ve!!) been looking most evenings for puppies and I think we’ve decided we’d like to get the same breed, a Tibetan Terrier

they make me melt!!!! The only 2 obstacles in our way are;

1. technically we shouldn’t have pets in our rental home so we need to ask our Landlord for permission before we get serious about this

2. they are expensive…the cost of a tibetan puppy is £650-850!!! given our current tight budget it might be difficult

BUT we have both said he makes us really happy and we love the ‘family’ atmosphere having him here creates 🙂

We’ve really been trying to stick to a food budget and have allowed ourselves £50/week for food and household goods (i.e. toilet roll/washing up liquid)…initially I thought £50 would be plenty (I’m a serious bargain shopper and know where ALL the offers are!!) but it’s really not going very far, despite our ‘budget dinners’…our favourite one this week had to be a chipotle bean and egg dish I made which we had with brown rice on the side…

It really was so tasty (recipe to follow!).

I’m off to work at Starbucks now then to the supermarket…with the exception of a few condiments our fridge and cupboards are totally BARE!!

As you may know now, I spent yesterday’s packing and moving house. Im now on my way (with the most unbelievably packed car you’ve ever seen!!) to my new home in Ipswich.

Yesterday was a pretty hectic day which started off with banana blueberry protein yogurt (similar to the one the day before except I had turned off the freezer so the fruit was room temp which I squished and mixed in, saving a repeat of the cold smoothie situation again)

I heading to Uni for my final revision lecture first thing. I think it was supposed to be helpful, but actually made me feel really stressed about how much I don’t know :(. My lecturer also mentioned some tips about our assignment that were due in today so in a mild panic, I headed straight to the library, made some alterations and then handed it in.

I then headed home (where it looked like a bomb had gone off!) to carry on packing, the removals men arrived at 2.30 and I have to say we’re pretty speedy…emptying the whole house in about an hour – I hope my things are ok and safe!! I was then left to clean and pack the remaining things into my car…my packing started off very organised in labelled boxes, but towards the end I was running around with black bags throwing in anything I could see before loading them into my car in a VERY unorganised fashion, I’m not sure how impressed James will be when it all arrives!!! ;)!

Eventually I finished cleaning, locked up, (for the last time) and feeling slightly emotional, headed to the estate agents to hand over the keys.

I then had to pop to work to drop some loaned items off (!) where I decide to grab what may be my new favourite drink; a misto (half filter coffee/half steamed milk) with just half a pump of hazelnut syrup (I love the flavour but not the sweetness hence the half pump!)… It was so so good and much needed by this stage in the day!! My friend also wrote a nice note of my cup 🙂

I’d been so busy I hadn’t really snacked all afternoon… i forgot!! which really shows how far I’ve come in my recovery-a year ago, not only was my mind totally obsessed with food but I had to eat every 2.5hrs otherwise I would get shaky and very anxious 😀 but realised I was seriously so snacked on a pulsin protein bar which I’ve been sent to try (review to come shortly!)

The journey time to Ipswich is about 5hrs and I was pretty tired by this point (about 6pm), not feeling like a drive that long, I called my mum; who lives half way and asked if I could stop and stay with her for the night, naturally she was delighted (my sisters also home so she has all her children together…always makes her happy!).

So I eventually arrived, relaxed in front of the tv for a couple of hours with my family and headed to bed ready for a 5.30am start, so i could arrive in time to collect the keys at 9am!

Very hectic few days but I am excited!!

question: what’s your packing style, are you organised? Do you start organised and end chaotic ? Or are you generally chaotic?!!

Thankfully I managed to transfer my contract to another store in Ipswich which means I get to stay with the company (I just couldn’t let go of all that free coffee!!) and managed to negotiate a 4 hour contract to start with.

I’ve mentioned a few times the amount of Uni work I’ve got going on at the moment and over the next 6 weeks. Well after that it doesn’t let up for a little longer; I have exams over April and May which will mean 2 things…1. I need LOTS of time to study for them (there is some serious biochemistry involved!) and 2. I will have to make the 9hr round trip in my car 3 times over those 2 months! So as I’m not going to have much free time, not being committed to lots of hours suits me perfectly. After my exams, hopefully I’ll be able to get lots more hours and start earning some more money!!

We made the decision to move to Ipswich so that James could join his 2 brother’s in a business they started a couple of years ago. It’s an IT/techie business (I don’t really understand!!!) but they were starting to run short on man power and needed someone to join them, to develop the business and grow it to the ‘next level’.. James is really great at building relationships with people and so is perfect for the job!! What this means though, is that with him on a new business venture and me about to start my final year of study, money is very tight 😦 so I’ll need as many hours as I can possibly get from June onwards!!

I have to say I felt slightly emotional when I left work yesterday, I think mainly because it’s been such an important part of my recovery and the girls I’ve worked with have been so supportive, so it really did feel like the end of an era!!

I’m moving on though to the next stage in my life which I’m ready for :).

Breakfast today (whilst looking out the window at the SNOW – in March…really!!) included avocado that I managed to grab in the reduced section yesterday and toast…

and lots of coffee of course!

Now I’m off to do some more packing!

Questions; have you got any nice plans for the weekend? How do you multitask when you have lots of different things going on in your life at the same time?

At the moment I work part time, to try and subsidise my income while I study in this fun place!

The job is great, partly because I love coffee….making it, drinking it, learning about it and also because I enjoy being around, talking to people and working in the service industry. My work friends are great and so are most of our regular customers, it’s also the 1st job I’ve had since I was at school where I haven’t had any responsibilities. I’ve always worked in management, starting off in small gastro-pubs and ending up running a sales team in Australia! so for me being able to go to work and do something I love, part time without the worry of business logistics is perfect!

In fact I love coffee so much so that I am the ‘Coffee Master’ for our store. If you don’t know, every Starbucks store has it’s own coffee master, this person goes through a fairly detailed learning programme and when they pass are allowed to wear a ‘special’ black apron (I don’t like wearing mine though…I’m happier in my green one blending in with the rest of the team :).

So back to today…I started work at 6.30am – not much fun in February in England 😦 it really is hard to get out of bed when it’s usually cold, damp and dark but I managed it…maybe it was the smell of the coffee enticing me!

Breakfast this morning was delicious;

Greek yogurt, 1/2 a banana with a spoonful of oats mixed in and a dollop of salty, nutty peanut butter on the top….

This time last year when I began my recovery my body was very strange about lots of foods I had previously always eaten, including milk and yogurt!! Every time I ate anything containing dairy…including cheese (even on a pizza!) I would break out in sore, angry horrible spots…so I cut out these products and missed them terribly. However…now life is good 🙂 and over the last few weeks I’ve started to reintroduce these foods…I intended to do it slowly but I love this combo so much, any time of the day…breakfast, before and/or after the gym, before bed…it’s safe to say I eat this whenever, and have definitely had more than I planned on having to ‘ease’ my body back into these foods, but so far so good, without any adverse effects so hey….why not!

This afternoon I intend to do some housework (yay!) try and do an hour or so studying (bigger yay!) and then head to the gym for a Step class…I love ‘Old Skool’ exercise classes…the type where you do the ‘grapevine’ and ‘sidestep’! I used to do them 2 or 3 times a week in Australia but haven’t been to one since I moved back so I hope it lives up to my expectations!!

I guess for someone who started with ‘writers block’ I haven’t done too badly!